Goodreads

Vultures

here on the mountainonly the birds bear witnessonly the birds are aware

close to the cliff-edgea lonely woman staringthe red-faced birds are aware

For dVerse. Victoria has asked us to write with patterns in mind. I thought I might try to pack as many patterns as I could into a small verse form. I chose a sedoka, with it’s repeating pattern of 5/7/7. Besides repeating a few words, I also used many repeating sound patterns, such as “only” and “lonely,” and some repetitions that are more visual, such as “are” and “aware.” See how many more patterns you can find. This was fun–write a poem and come join in!

Thanks Brian–everyone needs someone to pay them attention. It can be a lonely world out there. (I hate to ruin your fun with the bird fact–forgive me for this–but it doesn’t seem to be true that birds cannot see blue. I know. This changes everything.)

Thanks Bjorn–more people live close to the edge than we would care to know about, I think. It seems to me that something simple–like looking people in the face, smiling at them, giving even small indications that others are worth paying attention to, would go a long way to making the world better.

Difficult to get pattern into compression. You took the challenge and managed it very well. Not only did you capture the patterns in the words, but you gave us the visual of the woman and the birds itself forming a pattern or more and you were able to achieve a turn in the poem as well. Well done.